


5 Times Enjolras Starred in a Movie, and One Time He Didn't

by goshemily



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 14:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15439593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/pseuds/goshemily
Summary: “What’s it called, Eponine?”“Sharing a Bed.”“What?”---Or: Enjolras, onscreen and pining.





	5 Times Enjolras Starred in a Movie, and One Time He Didn't

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/gifts).



> This is not remotely one of the stories I was meant to be working on. Thank you to my beautiful [Ark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/works) for your invaluable input and hand-holding. Team Will Scarlet 4eva, etc.

1\. _Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor_

“What’s it called, Eponine?”

“Sharing a Bed.” 

“ _What_?”

She blows a giant pink bubble and pops it. “The Tale of Two Dicks.”

“Eponine, come on –”

She grins. It’s unsettling. “Come on, Enjolras, would I do that to you?”

“Absolutely you would.”

“You’re right. That’ll teach you to say yes to projects before you know what you’re getting yourself into. Someday, when you’re a big star, you’re going to need your wits about you.”

He scowls. “Look, I just want to know more about it. I’m going to help, alright?” Her movie’s due in two weeks, and it’s worth most of her final grade. Things have been rough at home; it’s not her fault she couldn’t work on it until May. He rubs his hand over his face. “I’m sorry, I just haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.”

Her smile loses its edge. That’s one of the reasons he loves her: she’s a knife, but she doesn’t hold it against him when he’s not. “It’s been a long semester.”

“Yeah.” Graduation looms. They’re sitting on the steps of Powell Library, looking out at the lawn, and the grass is greener than it should be in the California drought. The jacaranda trees on campus are in bloom like they’re desperate for attention and relief.

Eponine nudges him. “Tacos? Truce? My treat.”

“Craft services at their finest.” 

*

The movie is, after all, about sharing a bed.

“Look,” Eponine says, “I don’t care about, like, arty shit _as such_ –”

“Lies,” Feuilly tells them.

“– but it’s got to be in black and white, and it’s gonna be about intimacy, and I swear to God, Grantaire, if you laugh at me –”

“I wouldn’t dare,” he says, solemn as the day is long.

Enjolras looks at him. Grantaire’s as messy as always, hair tucked up under a beanie like they’re not in Los Angeles in a heatwave, violet circles under his eyes where his skin is thin and fragile. His fingers are very obviously crossed behind his back; he’s turned to make sure they’re in Eponine’s line of sight.

This is a fucking disaster. 

“So we’re sharing the bed,” Enjolras says. He’s an actor; he’s aware of his body and of his voice. He knows he’s drawn into himself and his voice is flat. “Then what?”

“That’s it,” Eponine says. “You’re in the bed and then Grantaire gets in, and then you look at each other and then you look away or whatever, but you can’t really make yourselves stop looking, that’s the point of the movie.”

Grantaire glances out the window. His chin is up like a challenge.

“I’m on lighting,” Feuilly says, “which basically means adjusting the blinds.” 

“I’m here to watch,” Courfeyrac says, “and to offer moral support to any who need it.”

“I’m here because I heard Musichetta was bringing tacos,” Bahorel says. 

“Do you even go here?” Grantaire asks him.

“No.” Bahorel is supremely unconcerned. “But I like the law library here better than at USC, so.”

Grantaire grins. “Go Bruins.”

Enjolras resists the urge to hit himself in the face with one of Eponine’s pillows. “How long is this movie going to be?”

“Like half an hour,” Eponine says. “Give or take.”

*

It’s longer. It’s so much longer. It’s so much longer that the sun rises and sets and the tide comes in and goes out, and Enjolras has to measure his breathing by what he can remember of the Earth spinning on its axis when Grantaire’s eyelashes sweep his cheek.

He lies facing Grantaire in Eponine’s narrow bed, his legs stretched long and his head pillowed on his arm. Grantaire faces him. He closed his eyes a few eons ago, and Enjolras is staring at the dark curve of his lashes, the freckles on the bridge of his nose. Eponine made Grantaire take off his beanie before she started filming, and his curls are half flattened and half sticking up and Enjolras wants to reach out and see if they’re warm in the red gold sun pouring through the window. It’s late afternoon, and the weight of the light is tangible.

Eponine hovers over them with her camera, and Sibelius is quiet and aching in the background, the movie timed to the length of his only violin concerto, minor and haunting and everything that Enjolras cannot name that lives behind his ribs. He can feel the heat where Grantaire’s hand lies near his own. He is so fucked.

Grantaire’s eyes open. They’re every color of blue in the world. Enjolras could never list them all.

Grantaire stares at him. They breathe out of time, as ill-matched in this moment as in every moment since freshman orientation, when Grantaire declared that he refused to believe in anything, from the sanctity of theater to the power of film for social good. Enjolras wanted to shake him then, furious; now, four years later, he does not have words for what he wants. Grantaire is more than what he pretends to be. Grantaire blinks.

The music ends. “Cut,” Eponine says softly.

“Thank God _that’s_ over,” Grantaire says. He hops up off the bed, and Enjolras presses his back against the wall, and keeps breathing.

 

2\. _Boxcar_

“Couldn’t you have just done a shitty horror movie like a normal newly-minted struggling actor?”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “Couldn’t you pour me some more champagne?”

“I’m going to be a doctor,” Combeferre says, “I know about these things.”

Courfeyrac sighs dreamily, draped upside down on a battered armchair with his feet over the back and his head almost touching the ground. The joint in his hand needs to be re-lit. “A doctor of philosophy. I’m sure you know about _many_ things.”

Combeferre nods. “Yes, and my critical studies allow me to tell _you_ , Enjolras, quite critically, that working with an approved indie wunderkind director so soon after graduation is ridiculous, and instead you should be waiting tables and regaling tourists with stories of how you’ll make it big someday.”

“You can hear the umlaut when he says it,” Courfeyrac says.

“There isn’t an umlaut in ‘wunderkind,’” Combeferre says.

“Could you fucking pass me the Korbel,” Enjolras says.

He loves his friends. He does. He spent the hours after his first audition, and again after his second, distracting himself from the cold lump in his stomach by walking the canals of Venice Beach and thinking about all the ways he’s grateful to know his friends, and grateful for their work in the world. Art is a tool, and they wield it.

But an hour ago, after the group text congratulations had died down, before Courfeyrac got back to the apartment from waiting tables and regaling tourists with stories of how he’d make it big someday, while Combeferre was still in class, Enjolras was lying alone on the scratchy rug in the hallway and staring at the ceiling.

He called Grantaire, now far away in New York, and listened to the phone ring and ring and ring until it went to voicemail. “It’s going to work,” he told the empty air. “You’ll see.”

 

3\. _Ms. Marvel: Kamala Khan_

“This is an important film, and I’m glad to be involved.” It’s easy to say and even easier to mean: a teenaged Pakistani-American Muslim superhero, saving New Jersey from fascism? Enjolras would have done the movie for free. Instead, he’ll take Marvel’s money and send it where it’s needed.

The reporter nods. “And what’s it like to be reunited with college friends? A party on set?”

Enjolras looks sidelong at Grantaire slumped beside him, posture languid and politely bored. “Something like that.”

*

It’s been pretty easy to avoid Grantaire since he moved back to LA; he and Courfeyrac are working such long hours, their dark modern retelling of _The Hardy Boys_ such a hit, that Enjolras only has to be in the same room with him a few times a year, and can usually escape the discomfort of Grantaire’s disregard – at least, until they wound up not only in the same movie, but in complementary roles.

Enjolras can feel himself untethered, little by little, the two of them playing best friends who live in each other’s pockets and who work to defeat evil. He knows himself unmoored, watching Grantaire openly disdain the media circus around them but act the clown to put the young cast at ease. He brings Jehan to set to do their star charts; he explains how the shooting schedule works, using limericks so they’ll stick in Marius’s head; he manages to casually tip over a row of loud metal chairs as the self-important male director is trying to explain to Cosette what it’s like to be a teenaged girl.

“I’m pretty sure I know better than him,” she tells Enjolras later, her stride impatient in Kamala’s blue boots.

“Is it always like this?” Marius asks, his eyes wide and unblinking.

“You work toward the ideal,” Enjolras answers. “You’ll get rid of the obstacles.”

“Including shitty directors?” They’ve rounded the corner between trailers and Grantaire’s lounging on Enjolras’s steps, cigarette in hand.

“Yes,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire makes a shooing motion at Cosette and Marius. “Go, my children, with my blessing. Springsteen has agreed to be on our soundtrack, and your elders have things to discuss.”

Cosette tugs Marius away, laughing, and Enjolras smiles after them.

“Have you seen the new pages?” Grantaire asks abruptly.

Enjolras looks back at him. “No. Why?”

Grantaire’s voice is blank. “I die in your arms.”

“ _What_?”

“I think it’s supposed to be the motivation for your big speech at the end, when you get the other librarians to help Kamala plan the demonstration.”

“I’m a librarian. Isn’t is believable that I just want to do what’s right because it’s right?” The sun is too hot, beating down on the back of Enjolras’s neck.

Grantaire squints at him. “Am I supposed to take you seriously?”

Enjolras sits on the asphalt next to Grantaire’s knee and tries not to automatically measure the distance between them. “So, what, you hack into the Hydra records, and then they kill you?”

“I get a couple of quips in, at least.” He flicks his ash and some lands on Enjolras’s arm. “Sorry.”

“Can I have one?”

“No,” Grantaire says, “this is my last.” He holds the cigarette out to Enjolras, who takes a long draw and hands it back. Their fingers don’t touch.

*

Grantaire looks up at Enjolras, a decorous amount of fake blood on his face. “I just wanted to do what’s right,” he says, and slowly closes his eyes.

Enjolras holds him, kneeling in the shell of a mostly-destroyed Jersey City library. He almost believes he can feel a faint tremor of Grantaire’s fingers pressed against his thigh. He thinks about kissing the top of Grantaire’s head, and instead he lowers him gently to the ground. He stands, resolute, and lets his gaze drop on an upturned copy of the Constitution. He pushes his square-rimmed glasses up his nose.

“Cut,” says the director.

“Nice job,” says Grantaire the corpse.

 

4\. _Robin Hood: 2700_

“If this is a bleak dystopia, why am I wearing red silk?” Grantaire asks.

“Because in the bleak dystopias of the future – and the present – our cardinal rule is to make it fashion,” Joly says, and adjusts the hem of Grantaire’s tunic.

Enjolras smiles at Bossuet in the mirror, who is adding the right amount of grime to Enjolras’s temple. It’s all just another weapon, Enjolras reminds himself. Dirt is part of the dirty work, and this is a ridiculous popcorn movie that has at least three good speeches about the evils of capitalism.

“Hey,” Grantaire says, peering over Joly’s head, “I don’t think I ever said thank you for sending me the script.”

“It’s nothing,” Enjolras says.

“No, really. Uh, I appreciate it.” He makes a noise like Joly accidentally stuck him with a pin.

Enjolras nods, meeting his eyes in the glass. “My pleasure.”

*

“Oh for fuck’s sake, _again_?”

“I promise I didn’t know about this when I asked if you were interested. I just thought it would be fun.”

Grantaire stares at him and Enjolras squirms uncomfortably. Grantaire gives a bark of laughter. “Fun? To hang in rigging off the side of a seventy-story building, and then crawl around in a bunch of sewers, chosen for their verisimilitude? To spout platitudes that most of your audience won’t hear? Only you, Enjolras.”

“Some of them will hear, though.” Enjolras is tired of this argument, but he’s even more tired at the thought of Courfeyrac’s face when he learns Will Scarlet is going to be wounded in the climactic battle with the Sheriff’s men, and then die in Robin Hood’s arms, a pietá. After _Ms. Marvel_ , Enjolras felt like he and Grantaire were growing closer again; it’s easier to talk to him now, in a way it hasn’t been since sophomore year. But this is another chance to touch Grantaire, another chance to give himself away.

Grantaire shakes his head. “Not enough of them.”

*

The wrap party is raucous, a joyous celebration of the studio’s excess and the good work of the cast and crew. Enjolras knows his cheeks are flushed, and he can’t help smiling at everyone; he loves this silly blockbuster with all his heart. Some of the lines are going to be quoted around the tables of college dining halls as a way of staking a claim on friends. Some of the scenes are going to be parodied. Mostly, it’s a movie with a _point_ , one that Rupert Murdoch inadvertently paid for and that might even in a small way help tear his oligarchy down.

Grantaire flings an arm around Enjolras’s neck and presses a cup full of red wine into his hand. “Yours is empty,” he says.

“But what will you drink?”

“What’s mine is yours.” Grantaire’s fingers drum against Enjolras’s collarbone, an unconscious echo of the tremble in Enjolras’s hands when Will Scarlet lay dying, stretched glorious and uncompromising across his lap.

“I’m tired of watching you die,” Enjolras says.

“Stop asking me to be a part of your movies, then. There’s only ever room for one surviving hero.” Grantaire hugs him close and quick, and steps back, plaintively looking around for more wine. His tight jeans and shabby boots make him raffish, a strolling player. He runs a hand through his hair.

“I could do other things,” Enjolras says. “I could do something more.”

For a moment, Grantaire looks at him, troubled. “Do you want to do something more? There’s no shame in acting, no more than in an actor’s life.” His mouth quirks. “We’re not the nineteenth century, and have recognized that occupations do not inure us from sin, nor drive us toward it; we’re none of us more likely to be besmirched than another, even if we _do_ tread the stage.”

Coming into their sophomore year of college, the better part of a decade ago, Grantaire played Dionysus in _The Bacchae_ for three glorious days in July. He was enthralling. Enjolras saw every performance, and afterward, in the lonely privacy of his own bed, he jerked off to Grantaire in his chiton and his unbound hair. Grantaire is often unconstrained, but Enjolras has never seen him so wildly aware of his own power as when he spoke Euripides. Every movement was liquid, his dark curls and luminous eyes otherworldly against the naked stage.

Enjolras kissed him at the closing night party, cups of wine in their hands as deeply red as these, though cheaper and bought with a fake ID. Grantaire had looked at him, eyes wide with shock, and stepped backward so quickly Enjolras almost thought he’d fall. “Please don’t,” Grantaire said, voice husky. “Please.”

Enjolras nodded, throat closed, and they never spoke of it again. Enjolras tries every day to bury his disappointed hopes.

He says, “I’m well aware of the power of propaganda, for evil or for good. What we do has meaning.” He shrugs. “But it’s never enough. It shouldn’t be enough. We don’t deserve to be content.”

“I like your laugh,” Grantaire answers. “I wish I heard it more.”

Enjolras smiles and carefully bumps his shoulder into Grantaire’s, measuring the exact degree of pressure and the fleeting length of contact. “I love acting. It would be hard to stop. There’s ways and ways of being in the world, and I’m alright with doing the one that spreads my message widest.”

“Exactly how much are you going to piss off PR on _this_ press tour?”

“You know me so well.”

 

5\. _Bloody Harlan_

Enjolras is in London next, playing the world-weary soldier in _The Lady’s Not for Burning_ , opposite Musichetta’s determined heroine. Courfeyrac kindly did not call him a coward; Combeferre might have tried, but swallowed his words when he saw Enjolras’s face. “You’re supposed to be an actor,” he said instead, mild.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Enjolras replied. “I thought it would go away when _he_ went away, after school; then I thought it would go away if I ignored him like he ignored me. But now we’re both here, and it hasn’t gone away, so I think _I_ have to.”

“Are you sure you’re not just being an idiot?” Courfeyrac’s tone was kind.

“No," Enjolras said miserably.

“Hey,” Musichetta says now, coming up to where he’s stretching on the stage and dimpling at him. “We’ve missed you on the boards.”

“The theater is my second greatest love,” Enjolras says solemnly. “After you.”

“Eponine just called me, looking for you – don’t run out on us too soon, will you?”

*

“Hear me out, okay? Just hear me out before you say no.”

“Why would I say no?”

“I want Grantaire for it as well, and –”

*

“There’s going to be a meme,” Grantaire mutters darkly. “Just mark my words. There’s going to be a meme.”

Jehan, on hand to help with script rewrites, tuts at him. “Some people would count themselves #blessed to be part of a meme.” Enjolras can hear the hashtag in his voice.

“Three movies, and I die in every single one? _In his arms_? Who has it in for me?”

Jehan pats him on the nearest part of his anatomy, his nose – Grantaire is prostrate on the floor of their rented rural house with the script, head in Jehan’s lap and feet nearly touching Enjolras. 

“People died for the union,” Enjolras reminds him. 

“I know, my captain. The 20,000 who will come to my funeral will be glad to hear you speak.”

“I wonder how Feuilly will shoot it,” Jehan murmurs, and starts scribbling notes to himself and humming “Which Side Are You On?” He rests his pages on Grantaire’s stomach, and Grantaire laughs.

*

There’s more coverage than Enjolras expected, even before filming begins. “‘The New Auteurs?’” he asks Eponine, waving the New Yorker article. “Did you know you were an auteur?”

“Of course,” she and Grantaire say in unison.

“It mentions the rest of us too,” Jehan says, wafting into the lounge with a book on divination and a book on company towns. “Each of the directors in the piece is part of a group that collaborates when it can.”

Enjolras loves his friends.

*

When they film Grantaire’s death scene, Enjolras doesn’t have to force himself to cry. It’s easy, thinking about the enormity of what they want to say and about how violence is cyclical and enacted in the same ways now as it was then. It’s easy, holding Grantaire with the shadows under his eyes and the so-real blood at his mouth. The blood’s still only decorous, but it becomes less inconceivable to Enjolras every time they play at this loss. His hands feel empty when he is not touching Grantaire.

Grantaire comes out onto the porch in the evening, two glasses in his hand. He gives one to Enjolras, leaning against the railing.

“Why did you choose to do this movie?” Enjolras asks.

“What do you mean? Eponine’s my friend. You’re all my friends, so long as you’ll have me.”

Enjolras shakes his head. “You had to leave the show. To be here for this long, in the middle of the season? I know how big that was.”

“Like I said, you’re my friends.” His tone is wry, even guarded.

“You’re kinder than you give yourself credit for.” The bourbon is good. It gives Enjolras something to do with his hands, and his mouth.

“You’re a hard bunch to resist,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras swirls his glass. “I don’t know about that.”

“Enjolras.” He hears Grantaire put down his glass. “Enjolras, look at me.” He’s concentrating very hard on his knuckles. At the corner of his vision he sees Grantaire reach for his glass and place it gently to the side.

Enjolras looks at him.

Grantaire’s eyes are enormous in the moonlight. His face is grave, an uncertain expression around his mouth. Standing this close, it’s easy to notice that he’s a few inches shorter than Enjolras, enough that his head is tilted slightly back. “You know how much I care about you.”

Enjolras shakes his head.

“You soar,” Grantaire says. “The world is incomplete without you. Your vehemence, your wanting to give. We’re less without you. You illuminate.”

Enjolras breathes deeply. “Say what you mean.” 

“Think about it.” Grantaire shrugs, impatient defense.

“I don’t think about it,” Enjolras says. “I know my looks get me things, I know they make my life easier, but Grantaire –” He makes a helpless gesture at Grantaire’s riotous curls. He steels himself and winds his finger through one and tugs gently. His hand falls open and drops, the remembered feel of the silken threads a brand.

“Your _looks_? I – oh hell, Enjolras, I’ve been in love with you since freshman year.”

Enjolras’s heart stutters. “What?”

Grantaire rubs his hand over his mouth. “Come on, you knew that. I’m here for Ep too, you _know_ that, but you also have to know I’d follow wherever you asked me to.” His words tumble over each other.

“I didn’t know. Grantaire –” He can’t take it in. “Freshman year? You told me not to kiss you.” The railing is working splinters into his hand, he’s gripping it so tightly.

“Yeah, because I don’t want to be your pity fuck.” There’s ragged self-loathing in Grantaire’s voice, and Enjolras can’t bear it. 

“Grantaire,” he says, reaching out, “not that, never that. I’ve wanted you for _years_. I love you.”

They look at each other in the violet shadows, a decade of knowing and wanting, and then Grantaire nods once, nervous and decisive and brave. Then he’s kissing Enjolras, more tender and more slow than Enjolras ever imagined. He takes his time, because they have time to take. Enjolras reaches back up to his curls and tugs him near. 

 

\+ Florence, Italy

The movie is nominated for so many awards. Sometimes they’re up against each other; Enjolras doesn’t mind at all, although whenever he’s given a vote he casts it for Grantaire. Grantaire wins Best Supporting Actor early on in the awards season and his speech goes viral: “How can you give me a statue for acting a man in love? It wasn’t an act at all.” Now that he feels free to say it, he says it constantly, in gestures and in words, to Enjolras and to everyone around them.

“We are a meme,” he tells Enjolras the next day. “I did foretell our fate.”

“You dying?” Enjolras asks, and tightens his hand around Grantaire’s.

“No, your face. That was quite a smile last night.”

Enjolras grins again, unrepentant.

*

They leave soon for Florence – “Art that might make beggars of us all,” says Grantaire, “because it beggars belief; but then it gives the belief back, made stronger” – and refuse Courfeyrac’s offer to accompany them, an official videographer for “all your coming adventures.” It’s said with a wink.

They encounter the city in snow, austere but for the way the sunset paints the hills a dusky rose. They climb to the roof of the Duomo, and Grantaire wants to shout his creed from the top, his belief in Enjolras. Enjolras kisses him instead.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't focus on anything I was planning to write, so I tried something unlike my usual. Thank you again to Ark!!
> 
>     • Sibelius wrote one concerto, the [Violin Concerto in D Minor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpS_u5RvMpM), which is both very beautiful and a long time to be looking at someone on whom you're trying to conceal a massive crush.  
>     • _[Ms. Marvel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms._Marvel_\(Kamala_Khan\))_ is incredible and I hope she never gets into the hands of a shitty director.  
>      • [_The Bacchae_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bacchae) is a play by Euripides about the power of Dionysus. I'm 97% sure that I read about George Blagden playing him while at drama school; more recently, [Ben Whishaw did in a translation by Anne Carson](https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/bakkhai/23-jul-2015-19-sep-2015).  
>      • [_The Lady's Not for Burning_](http://quietfarm.com/TLNFB.html) is a phenomenal play about hope, and I am completely convinced that anyone who could play a good Enjolras could play a good world-weary Thomas, who learns to hope again.  
>      • The [Harlan County War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War) took place in Kentucky in the 1930s, as a result of state and company violence against attempted unionization. Florence Reece wrote the song ["Which Side Are You On?"](https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/bakkhai/23-jul-2015-19-sep-2015) [on the night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzudto-FA5Y) the sheriff tried to murder her union organizer husband.


End file.
